In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes", Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said he loved watching banks "squirm" about rumors of his latest upcoming leak. (Source: CBS)

Questions about Mr. Assange's motives (he has called himself an anarchist in the past) went unasked, as did the question of whether Wikileaks might be profiting off the stock shifts its leaks cause. (Source: CBS)

Assange claims U.S. is utterly incapable of removing his site from the web

In an interview [video]
with the CBS show60 Minutes, the founder-and-chief of
the controversial secrets siteWikileaks discusses the recent
backlash against his site, following the release ofU.S.
MilitaryandState
Department secrets. He states, "The U.S. does not have the
technology to take the site down . ... Just the way our technology is
constructed, the way the Internet is constructed."

He adds, "We've had attacks on particular
domain names. Little pieces of infrastructure knocked out. But we now have some
2,000 fully independent in every way websites, where we're publishing around
the world. It is -- I mean, it's not possible to do."

Assange is referring to the fact that his site
lost its central domain name, most of its official hosting, and its donations
accounts. Volunteers, who host mirrors of the webpage, now sustain the
site. Attempting to access Wikileaks or searching for it in Google
results in visitors being redirected to one of these mirrored sites.

While the issue of whatWikileaks has
done is hot in the minds of many, much of the60
Minutes interview focuses on the site's threats that it will release
damning information implicating a major
U.S. bank in wrongdoing.

In an October 2009interviewwith the
International Data Group's publication ComputerWorld, Mr. Assange
claimed to possess a hard drive with a wealth of information from the Bank of
America.

Inan
interviewwith top business periodical Forbes, which
took place in late November, Wikileaks' Assange claimed to be preparing a
"megaleak", which would likely lead to a major U.S. financial
institution (presumably Bank of America) being investigated and potentially
charged by international authorities.

During the60
Minutes special, interest was high on the topic, but the interviewer's
attempt to extract more info from Mr. Assange was largely rebuffed. He
states, "I won't make any comment in relation to that upcoming
publication."

But he did express that he gains pleasure from the
ill effects on the financial world his news is causing. He states,
"I think it's great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe
it's them."

The interview did not touch on a significant point
in that regard -- the question of whether any Wikileaks members --
including Mr. Assange -- had profited off the stock shifts triggered by the
organization's new releases.

Some have suggested that Mr. Assange andWikileaks may
be using its new releases to profit on the stock market. Using certain
mechanisms the site could selectively release news, dropping a commercial
entity's stock price, making money off the drop. Indeed, the Bank of
America's share price dropped 3 percent in late 2010 on speculation that it was
inWikileaks crosshairs. The actual
release could drop stock further. It would be relatively easy for someone
affiliated with the site or its members to exploit the financial repercussions
of the site's actions.

Wikileaks is a relatively loosely
organized and regulated operation, with less than a dozen full time staff
members, by almost all accounts. The site publishes no details of its
operating procedures or finances.

Some seemed to imply that we were making up allegations that Wikileaks was manipulating the stock market to profit itself or its financiers. This is absolutely not the case. Those capable of a quick Google search should be able to find a number of stories on this topic, such as:
"Wikileaks is harmful now, but could become even more destructive" -- Kansas City Star

Which writes:

Shares in Bank of America dropped 3 percent Tuesday. Although they recovered Wednesday, banking analyst Dick Bove said on CNBC that this may represent a new means of stock-market manipulation, by which the unknown funders of Wikileaks could profit by cratering shares in targeted companies.

Also some challenged whether Assange was ever really an anarchist. Well he said he was, at least at one time, back in the 90s. In the book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfus, which Mr. Assange edited, researched, and contributed text to, an autobiographical passage by Assange describes:

As he quietly backed out of the system, wiping away his footprints as he tip-toed away, Mendax [Assange] thought about what he had seen. He was deeply disturbed that any hacker would work for the US military.

Hackers, he thought, should be anarchists, not hawks.

He may well have changed his views since his teenage years in Australia in the 1980s, but it is well documented that at least at one time he expressed anarchistic views.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

"it is well documented that at least at one time he expressed anarchistic views."

Well I think I said at least one time that we should put a bomb somewhere, kill someone, beat someone, rob a bank, rob a vending machine, rob a ATM, burn something and so on... if I didn't then I'm saying it now!

But seriously what the problem of being anarchist? I see plenty of people supporting royalty, heck some countries still have kings, I don't agree with it but that doesn't make it wrong!

"We are going to continue to work with them to make sure they understand the reality of the Internet. A lot of these people don't have Ph.Ds, and they don't have a degree in computer science." -- RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis